John Harvey: Cold in Hand

"Karen," he said, the vestiges of a Scottish accent that came out more strongly after a drink or three now barely noticeable, "apologies for not getting back to you sooner."

"No problem."

"What exactly's your interest here?"

Succinctly as she could, she told him.

"Maybe you, me, and what's-his-name up in Yorkshire."

"Guest."

"Aye, Guest. Maybe the three of us should get together, see what there is, if anything, by way of common ground."

Karen agreed. "One thing, the victim, Andreea, how did she die?"

"Her throat was cut," Butcher said. "Practically from ear to ear."

Resnick was sitting in semidarkness when Karen called, listening to some recordings Thelonious Monk had made for Prestige Records in the fifties, his piano accompanied by bass and drums; Monk as ever going his own way, sounding, Resnick thought, like a cantankerous old man who, every now and then, surprised himself and those around him with flashes of good humour.

Would he mind, Karen had asked, if she popped round? She wouldn't disturb him for long.

He would not.

Earlier in the day, he read again the few cards and letters he'd had from members of Lynn's family, stilted most of them, tripping over themselves not to give offence, to find the right words. Taking a pad, he had begun to draft replies but time and again he had been overcome and, finally, he had pushed pad and pen aside; another task left for another day.

He had promised Lynn's mother that he would go through her things, some bits and pieces of jewellery Lynn had had since a teenager, a watch her father had given her for her twenty-first birthday, a box she kept crammed with old photographs: Lynn as a chubby thirteen-year-old in school uniform, smiling self-consciously at the camera; Lynn, a little younger, on the bike she'd been given when she started secondary school; younger still, with her parents on holiday in Cornwall-one especially he remembered her showing him with pride, a girl of no more than eight or nine, hair in pigtails, triumphantly holding up a pair of crabs she had caught off the quay, one in each hand.

Some of these her mother wanted; others he would keep.

Karen Shields was at the door, a bottle of whisky wrapped in white tissue in her hand.

"I didn't know what you liked," she said, pulling away the tissue and holding up the bottle.

Resnick found a smile. "That's fine."

Johnnie Walker Black Label: not Springbank, but good enough. He found a pair of glasses and she followed him through into the front room. Monk was still playing: "Bemsha Swing."

Karen listened for a few moments, head cocked towards the speakers. "Who's this?"

He told her.

"Not exactly restful."

"No. I can turn it off if you want."

"No, leave it. It's good." She grinned. "At least, I think it is." She cast her eye along the lines of albums and CDs. "Always been into jazz?"

"Pretty much. One of the things that keeps me sane. Least, it used to."

"Lynn was another."

"Oh, yes."

"You must be finding it hard."

"No, not really."

"Lying bastard."

Resnick sniffed and smiled and poured two good measures of Scotch.

"My grandfather, you know," Karen said, "he was a bit of a jazz musician. Calypso, too. Trumpet, that's what he played. Trumpet and piano. When he came over to England from Jamaica, it was to join this band, King Tim's Calypso Boys. It didn't work out too well; I don't know why. He did go on one tour, I know, to New Zealand, with a band called the Sepia Aces." Karen shook her head and gave a wry smile. "The All-Black Sepia Aces-that's how they were advertised. But after that, I think he more or less gave it up, the trumpet. He worked as a carpenter-a joiner, that was his trade. I only ever remember hearing him play a few times."

She caught Resnick with a look.

"Andreea Florescu, they found her body."

"Oh, shit!"

"Leyton, not so far from where she'd been staying. Her throat had been cut."

Resnick hung his head. "It doesn't get better, does it?"

"No, I'm afraid not."

Resnick got up and walked to the window, whisky glass in his hand. So far he hadn't bothered to pull the curtains across and his reflection stared back at him dumbly from the darkness.

A jerky ascending phrase from Monk's piano, a rapid tumbling arpeggio, and then two quick final notes stabbed out from the keyboard. "Sweet and Lovely." There and gone.

"Lynn used to talk about it," Resnick said, turning back into the room. "The danger Andreea was putting herself in by coming forward, agreeing to be a witness. She'd promised her that nothing would happen, that she'd be all right. It got to her, the fact she'd been lying."

"She shouldn't have felt guilty."

Resnick hunched his shoulders. "Maybe yes, maybe no. But she did."

"I've spoken to the guy who's handling the investigation, someone I know. Butcher. Chris Butcher. He's good. I'm going to meet with him and the SIO from the Pearce shooting sometime in the next couple of days."

"When's the postmortem?"

"Tomorrow sometime, I think. Early, probably."

"I'd like to go down-"

"Charlie!"

"Oh, not to interfere. Nothing official."

"I seem to have heard that before."

"No, I mean it. I'd just like to see her. See the body."

"What for?"

"I don't know. I'm probably not going to be able to explain it very well, but… it's for Lynn, somehow, what she would have wanted. What she would have done."

The distrust, the disbelief were clear on Karen's face.

"Look"-he moved back and sat down, facing her-"I won't say anything. I won't interfere. The only other thing I might do when I'm down is go and see Bucur, just to see how he's bearing up, express my sympathy. But that's all. You have my word."

"Your word?" Karen raised an eyebrow appropriately.

"Yes."

She tasted a little more Scotch. "All right, I'll see what I can do."

For a while, they managed to talk about other things, but after not too long they'd run out of what to say.

Resnick walked her to the door. When would he ever be able to open it without seeing what he had seen before, the night Lynn had died?

"This operation Daines is involved in," Karen said, "what I hear-what my bagman hears-I reckon it's coming to a head any day. Rumours flying round all over the place apparently. Officers in Operational Support have had their leave cancelled, armed response teams, too."

"Likely read about the rest in the papers."

Karen smiled. "I daresay."

She turned her head at the end of the path. "I'll get back to you about viewing the body."

"Okay." He raised a hand and hesitated momentarily before going back into the house.

Andreea Florescu-what had once been Andreea Florescu-lay on the stainless-steel table, cold and open-eyed. The places where her body had been opened up had been meticulously sewn back, neat stitches, a mother would have been proud. First, she would have been photographed fully clothed, then photographed again as each layer was removed, a slow striptease till she was ready for the pathologist's loving care, the bone cutters, the scalpel, the saw. All external marks and stains would have been noted, samples taken from her hair, scrapings from beneath the fingernails before they were carefully clipped, swabs from here and there, all this labelled and stored. Before opening the chest cavity, the pathologist would have followed the track of the killer's knife blade across her neck with his scalpel, centimetre by centimetre, inch by inch.

Resnick looked down and saw all of this: saw nothing.

How many such bodies had he seen? How many lives rubbed out?

Another expression floated past, not quite right: somebody's mother, somebody's child.

Andreea's daughter, how old had Lynn said she was?